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While Harry Potter has grown to become a huge a marketing event, the book series is still, at its heart, a literary event. Critic-at-large John Powers considers kids today lucky to have that experience. He compares it to his experiences purchasing and reading the Hardy Boys mysteries as a child.

After soaring to fame with Saturday Night Live, Dan Aykroyd built a solid film career. But he's still capitalizing on his early hit, The Blues Brothers (now available in a 25th-anniversary DVD). He serves on the board of the "House of Blues" restaurant and concert-venue franchise, and last year he published a book as his Blues Brothers alter-ego, Elwood, interviewing blues greats. (This interview was first broadcast on Nov. 22, 2004.)

Fresh Air jazz critic Kevin Whitehead picks CDs, books and a DVD for the jazz lover on your list this holiday season. His selections include a book of Sonny Rollins photographs and music from the first season of the HBO series Treme.

Robin D.G. Kelley's new book, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, focuses on the career of the eccentric jazz pianist and composer. It reveals new details about Monk's life, music and mental health problems, and provides a glimpse into the New York jazz scene of the mid-twentieth century.

Robin Meloy Goldsby has spent decades making "pleasant and unobtrusive" background music as a cocktail lounge piano player. Now she steps front and center with a memoir called Piano Girl: Lessons in Life, Music, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian.

Studs Terkel has interviewed some of the world's most familiar musicians. In And They All Sang he's collected interviews with Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Ravi Shankar and others.

Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews Mark Miller's High Hat, Trumpet, and Rhythm: The Life and Music of Valaida Snow. It's a biography of jazz singer and musician Valaida Snow, aka "Little Louis."

In 1957, photographer W. Eugene Smith moved into a lower Manhattan loft which served as a late-night hangout for jazz musicians. He proceeded to make approximately 4,000 hours of reel-to-reel tape recordings, and take nearly 40,000 photos, in and around his apartment.

Every weekday through Hispanic Heritage Month, World Cafe dives into the music of a different country in Latin America.

She's among the last living beboppers, one of the first singers on Blue Note and a pioneer of voice and bass. The legendary Sheila Jordan joins Christian McBride for a career-spanning conversation.